Online Petition Claims Google is Promoting Illegal Ivory Trade Abroad

As a company, Google has a pretty green reputation, funding green energy efforts around the world. But surprisingly, the Iternet giant is not completely ethically and green conscious, as it still traffics ivory products through its various retailers and vendors. The organization Sum of Us is making a plea to Google to get the blood off their hands and stop trafficking ivory immediately, which you can join by signing this petition.

Despite Google’s official policy of against selling products made from endangered animals, many ivory items still pop up from their associated retailers around the world. These retailers sneak through to Google customers due to lenient enforcement by Google policies, which make illegal ivory available to virtually anyone who knows how to search for it, or pop up as Google ads.

The black market ivory trade has left hundreds of elephants slaughtered or orphaned across Africa and India, as poachers hunt their valuable tusks. In fact, the population of African forest elephants has dropped a whopping 62 percent in the last 10 years alone, fueled by the lust for illegal ivory.

Ivory retailers are not only searchable, but appear as Google shops and also as Google sense ads. The company says that they remove ivory ads when detected, but the monitoring system is lax. SumofUs hopes that this petition will help Google make completely banning and regulating ivory retailers and ads a priority for the company.